


Watching It Burn

by KayDiggsWriting



Series: The Sins Of A Sacrifice [6]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: F/M, Hamgelica, Hamliza, Heartbreak, Infidelity, Low Self Esteem, OBC - Freeform, Pain, breakdown - Freeform, just really sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-20
Updated: 2017-10-20
Packaged: 2019-01-17 22:55:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12375852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KayDiggsWriting/pseuds/KayDiggsWriting
Summary: Alexander Hamilton laid with another woman. And if that weren't awful enough, he decided to tell the entire world about it. "Saving" his legacy and destroying his family in the process





	Watching It Burn

**Author's Note:**

> You don't have to read the other stories to understand this but you still should.

Shame.

It was an emotion that was new to Elizabeth Schuyler. But it was consuming her all the same. Ninety- eight pages. Alexander Hamilton published a ninety-eight page pamphlet on that woman. He'd never published a paragraph of her. The woman he claimed to be in love with. The woman he'd pledged his life to. Marriage vows meant nothing to him. Eliza meant nothing to him.

The obvious truth behind those words was enough to make her throat close. She had to be stronger than that. She had to prepare herself for the worst. The stories, the whispers, the stares. They'd all come soon enough. Taking over her life. Taking over her children's lives. Did Alexander think that through? Of course not! His only concern was for himself. She could stomach the blatant disregard for their marriage. Her heart couldn't take the same dismissive feelings towards their wonderful children. _Her_ children, as he'd written.

Alexander wasn't the first man in history to have an affair. Far from it. Eliza heard tales from her very own girlfriends of their husband's infidelities. Much more frequent and long lasting than her own husband's. But those sins wouldn't be the talk of the town. Because those men weren't Alexander Hamilton, previous Secretary of State. Right hand man to the former president. Decorated war hero. Those men didn't publish a ninety-eight page pamphlet detailing the events of the affair. Telling everyone what he did, who he did it with, how he did it and where he did it.

_Most of them in my own house._

Oh God! Eliza stood from the tainted mattress. Bile threatening to escape as her mind flashed carnal images without her permission. Images of that woman in her bed. With her husband. How could he not love her enough to say no? How could he not care? What did she have to offer than Eliza didn't? Was she better in bed? Her touch more enticing? Her kiss more fervent? Her folds more warm? The nausea was back.

The mirror suddenly became her enemy. Spitting back an image Eliza didn't want to be. Showing her things she didn't want to see. Her hair no longer glistened. Her eyes no longer a bright flame. Her face sagged more than she was willing to accept. Her body... she'd had multiple children and her waistline proved so. She wasn't the same woman she was when she met Alexander. She was the problem. She disgusted herself. Of course Alexander would rather touch another. A woman whose breasts were full and stomach was empty. A woman whose long curls fell gracefully down her porcelain skin. A woman as beautiful as the Maria Reynolds. She needed to be as beautiful as she, if she wished to save her marriage.

Eliza's hands rummaged through the makeup on the surface of her dresser. Adding touches to her tired face. To make her the woman Maria Reynolds was. Pats of powder to her lushless skin. Blush on her pale cheeks. And the lipstick. Maria's deep red lipstick was the talk of the town. Did Elizabeth even own such a color? She scanned the various shades of pink. No red. She needed red. Lost to her own sense, she began throwing the disappointing makeup about the room. Clearing the surface. Making it easier to find the darkest color by ridding the light colors that weren't good enough. She wasn't good enough.

"Elizabeth!" The door to the bedroom opened unexpectedly. Alexander watched the madness unfolding. He carefully stepped into the room and was thumped in the forehead with the rounded edge of a lipstick tube.

"Not good enough." Eliza was muttering in her destruction of her expensive makeups.

"Eliza, stop this at once!" Alexander's voice boomed through the room. Gaining no noticeable reaction from her. "Betsy, enough!" He charged past the cracked and discarded shells of maquillage on the floor until he was at her side. Pulling her to his body. Restraining her frantic arms with his own.

"Let go of me!" Elizabeth pushed against the chest she once claimed as her own. A chest that now belonged to the beautiful Maria Reynolds. Alexander was no longer hers and the whole world knew that. She didn't want to be touched by him.

"Stop this! You've gone mad!" His hold was weakening against the fight.

"You've made me go mad." She shot back weakly.

Slacking herself against him. Too hurt to stop the will to fight from draining out of her. Too hurt to resist the urge to break down in wrecked sobs. Crying into the arms of the man who would rather be holding another.

"Eliza." Around her he became less of a means of restraint and more a means of comfort. But she didn't want his comfort. She wanted his love. His loyalty. And he'd thrown it away. So he could take his comfort and do the same. "Please don't cry. Elizabeth, I am so sorry."

But sorry for what? Stepping away from their marriage? Telling the world to save his own ass? Sorry for never loving her as she thought? Making her realize she was never good enough? Would never be good enough. She'd grown tired of the fake apologies. She'd grown tired of Alexander. With the last of her energy, she pulled away from him. This time he didn't try to stop her. Just as he didn't stop himself from laying with that woman.

She found herself stumbling onto her hands and knees. When had they lowered to the floor? At least now she was as low physically as she was emotionally. She saw no reason to rise. Truly, she didn't have the will. So she crawled back to the mirror. Forcing open the compartment at the bottom. Releasing a drawer full of folded papers.

"I saved every letter you wrote me." A random arm full was tossed in his direction. Alexander moved to retrieve them.

"Every one?"

"Every single one. They were the dearest things I owned. No one in all my days ever wrote to me the way you did. I-I just knew you were the one. You said you were the one." She lifted a note to her bust. Hoping the flowery contents could repair her broken heart if held close enough. Alexander bowed his head in shame. "I-I thought." Her voice cracked. The sobs subsiding but the tears streaming steadily. They would never stop. "Do you know what Angelica said when we saw your first letter arrive?"

Elizabeth threw her her sister's name into her words like a final lifeline to make him feel bad. To make him regret what he'd done. Beyond being sorry for the consequences. She dangled her sister like bait. Knowing what her opinion meant to her husband. Knowing what she herself meant to her husband. More than Eliza did. He'd rather be with her. He'd rather be with Maria Reynolds. Would she ever be good enough? The bait caught. His head lifted up. His gaze meeting hers. The desperate need to know Angelica's thoughts deep in his unfaithful eyes.

"What?"

"She said, _be careful with that one, love. He will do what it takes to survive_." Verbatim. An exact quote. A warning she should have listened to. Because after their first meeting, Angelica knew Alexander better than she could ever hope to. "But I didn't listen to her. I laughed her warning away. Worshiping every stroke of ink on every page you sent to me. You were so good. So skilled with your words that I had no other choice than to fall in love with you. Every line I scanned over weakened more of my defenses. The stories you told. The palaces.. the _cathedrals_ you built with your paragraphs. They could send the devil head first into infatuation."

It was almost a compliment. A very bitter one. Alexander, being the man he was, accepted it with pride.

"Thank you."

The barbaric urge to slap him tingled in her fingers. But she, unlike her husband, could ignore negative desires. Yet her fingers still trembled as she traced the broken seal. Unfolding the aged letter in her hand. Her eyes read over the opening lines.

**My dearest, Elizabeth**

Pathetically, her heart was brought to life by the words she'd read before.

**Everyday that passes without you in my touch is a day of agony.**

Her eyes fluttered shut. Soaking it in. Wishing she could still make herself believe that. With her eyes closed, a new line of words appeared in her head.

_The charge against me is a connection with one James Reynolds._

She pried them open again. Hoping if she continued to scan the words in front of her, the letter in her mind would leave.

**I ache to hold you close. Smell the sweet scent of your hair.**

_My real crime is an amorous connection with his wife._

**Do you miss me all the same? I hope that you do.**

_For a considerable time with his knowing consent._

**This war keeps us separated in body. But my heart is home with you.**

_I had frequent meeting when her most of them at my own house._

**Please care for it and treat it well. As I am doing with yours. Mrs. Hamilton, you haunt my every waking and unconscious moment.**

_Mrs. Hamilton, with her children, being absent on a visit to her father._

The letter tore in half. Her own hands being the culprit. Alexander inhaled sharply. He stood then. Taking the two necessary steps to tower over her as she rested on her knees. His hand reached to grab the letter. Save what was left of his precious words. Eliza snatched back. No! These were her letters. His lies. She could do with them as she pleased. Just as he did with Maria Reynolds' letters.

"You published the letters she wrote you." There was no logical reason for the disbelief. No logical reason to inform him of what he already knew. But she had to say it out loud. Try to explain to him why what he did was wrong. Make him understand how he broke her. "You told the whole world how you brought this girl into our bed."

His eyes flickered to the very bed across the room. Elizabeth noticed.

"I had to. Why can't you understand? Why can't anyone understand that I had to?"

"You did not!" She hated looking up to him to speak. He was beneath her now. He should be beneath her.

"Have you any idea what the accusations of improper speculation could do to my name?"

"So you ruin our lives instead?" She was done being quiet. The question roared from her mouth.

Startled, Alexander stepped back. Not as steadily as we would have liked to. Eliza rose to her feet. Unuse to being scolded this way by his wife, Alexander appeared more angry than remorseful. Her yelling must have wounded his pride. But that wasn't enough. She wasn't enough. She was broken. He should be broken. And she had an idea of how to do it.

"Are you so obsessed with this idea of an impeachable legacy that you'd rather destroy it yourself than risk someone else doing it? The pamphlet was nonsense. Your paranoia made the paragraphs senseless. These paragraphs." Eliza held the ruined note in her hand up to him. "Are senseless." His expression became impassive. So she hit him where it was sure to leave a mark. "Do you know what Angelica said when she read what you'd done?" His bravado cracked for a fraction of a second. He looked small. "She said, _you've married an Icarus_!" Poison seeped past her lips when she spoke the phrase the way Angelica would have when she wrote it. " _He's flown too close to the sun_."

Alexander folded into himself. Broad shoulders lowered. His head down. His face... broken. Elizabeth had never seen him like this. Pity scratched her surface.

"Are those her honest words?"

"To the letter. She appears to hate you more than I."

"Y-You hate me?"

Did she? Could she? The truth was uncertain. But she could try. The incline of her chin should be enough of an answer. It as the only one he deserved.

"I no longer wish for a place in the narrative to be written about your life."

"Eliza-"

She brushed past him. Stopping only to scoop up the letters she'd thrown at him. She could hear her husband's frantic footsteps trailing her down the stairs.

"What you did was unforgivable." Was called over her shoulder at him.

"You don't understand."

"The world has no right to know our life like that, Alexander. No damn right to know the dirty seeds you spilled onto our bed." Her feet paused in the din. Just in front of the fireplace that was lit for the season's chilled days.

"What are you-"

"You had no right to tell them!"

"Keep your voice down, you will frighten the children!"

"In doing so, you have forfeited your own rights. To my heart. To our bed. You've torn everything apart. You've destroyed me. So I will destroy your words."

"Elizabeth, don't you dare!"

"Do not tell me what to do! You lost the husbandly right to command things of me when you entered another woman's body. That sin can't be redeemed. Not by you. And the by the lies in these letters." She relinquished them into the fire. The cackling sound of burning memories filled their house. The aroma of scorched love inhaled through their noses.

"My letters." He whimpered.

"Your _lies_." She corrected. "I'm going to bring down the rest."

"Eliza, they are not lies. I love you."

"Not enough to reject whatever woman flings herself at you."

"I was weak. It meant nothing."

"Your remorse has fallen on deaf ears, Alexander. You'd do well to return to your office tonight. Make a bed of the chair and desk that was always more important than I."

"Nothing more than what I deserve." He nodded. His agreement angered her further.

"You deserve to burn as your letters do."

"Indeed." Again he was small. Weak. Not Alexander at all.

She was using her words to be intentionally spiteful. But she couldn't take them back. She wouldn't. No matter how she longed to.

Before she could retract the venom of her statement, she made for the steps. Running into their bedroom. _Her_ bedroom. Ignoring the new pain of her already broken heart shattering beyond repair. The compartment of letters spilled onto her floor at her feet.

When she was bending down to bring them up, she caught another glimpse of herself in the mirror. The view of a woman who could no longer love herself. Who would work day and night to no longer love Alexander Hamilton.

"Why are you never good enough?" She spoke quietly to the reflection.

The bitter woman staring back asked her the same thing.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. Sorry for errors. Comments and Kudos make me cry happy tears.


End file.
